Server "re-Build"

[Venocide]

Hey everyone. Been a looooong time since I was on here. lol. Anywho... So, I've aquired an interesting piece of hardware. It's a HP Proliant ML310 server. The place I work at was just gonna toss it from the storage room. I got a nice batt back up from it too. lol. I was wondering what all I can do to this thing? I want to host a game server on it but I am not familliar with "server" pc's all that much. So, I guess I'm really asking: How much ram and what kind can I max this out to, it does have two 15k rpm drives in it but not sure of size, any software I should use? This even worth the time to ask about?

[ohldboy]

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantml310/index.html

 

If this is it, Pentium D dual core  or Pentium 4, up to 8 GB DDR2 memory.

 

or

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06a/15351-15351-241434-241646-241477-3201057.html?dnr=1

Edited August 7, 2013 by ohldboy

[Venocide]

It's the latter link. I do know that it has the Xeon proc 2.4ghz and has 3 gigs in it now. I want to say the 15k drives said 250gb. Should I mess around with it? lol. I was just surprised that my work wanted to just throw it away. I was cleaning out a storage room and they said to dump everything in it. I knew kinda what it was and snatched it up. Boots up and everything. I know we have a huge rack based server now, so, i guess this was before the upgrade.

[EuroFight]

From my experience with older servers (I used a Dell Precision with dual processors (two, dual-core Intel Xeons) and 6GB of DDR2 ECC, and all I can really say is it was hot (old server chips were designed to run hot), underperforming (my current

[Venocide]

So... Dont mess with it? lol. Put on ebay or craigslist and sell it?

[EuroFight]

It could be fun to mess around with, maybe try running it for a couple of weeks but maybe not as such a long term thing.

[Venocide]

So, I guess I have to ask, What makes a "server" - a server? lol... Could I run my i7 as a game host machine? Ive been looking for an excuse for another build. Maybe upgrade my i7 to 24 gigs with a couple TB drives in raid.

[EuroFight]

Servers are generally designed to stand long periods of uptime and are designed to be as redundant as possible, meaning if one component fails, the whole system does not. This is achieved through mirrored RAID arrays, hot swappable drives and even hot swappable RAM, and processors in some cases. ECC RAM is also often used which reduces the risk of data held in RAM for long periods of time being corrupted. Sever operating systems are also designed to be much better at multitasking and more stable.

[Venocide]

Tell me what you think of this as a build:

 

proc: AMD FX-8350 Vishera 4.0GHz

Proc cooler: Antec Kuhler H2O 620 Liquid Cooling System

mobo: ASUS Sabertooth 990FX R2.0

ram: G.SKILL Ripjaws X series 16GB (4x4GB) 240-pin SDRAM DDR3 1600

GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 (x2)

Sound: Creative sound blaster Zx

PSU: OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W Modular

and then couple HDDs and a full tower case of whatever I choose.

[EuroFight]

What would this system be used for?

[Venocide]

Gaming and overall to be a good system for the next couple years.

[EuroFight]

The rig seems pretty solid, but as far as RAM is concerned, if the price was similar, you'd probably be better running 2x8GB, but you don't really need 16GB for today's games, 8GB is more than adequate. You could then go for the 4x4GB later on if you needed the extra memory for next gen games.

 

Also, unless you're an audiophile like Stoner, today's motherboard integrated sound should be more than adequate.

 

The reason I've been trying to shave money off elsewhere is you're really going to want more graphics power than what you currently have. You'd be better off going with something like a single HD7870 or even HD7950 to play next gen games at reasonable settings.

 

Hope this helps